


The Mostly-Evil Hank McCoy

by the_wordbutler



Category: Fantastic Four, Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: (stop smirking hank), Alcohol, Drinking Games, Humor, M/M, ends in a wedding, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:58:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“So, wait,” Tony says, and holds up a hand.  “Let me just—make sure I’ve got this straight.  I need to specify who I want to screw, marry, and kill—”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>“As per the rules you made up, yes,” Hank agrees.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i> “—out of Batman, Superman, and Captain Ahab.”</i>
</p>
<p><i>“America!” Reed announces, but he sounds like he’s from Alabama.  </i>Amurikuh!</p>
<p>Or: Hank McCoy is a bastard, thank you very much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mostly-Evil Hank McCoy

**Author's Note:**

> Although I wrote this shortly after Avengers debuted in theaters, I never posted it here. Obviously, this needed to be rectified. 
> 
> This story assumes that Hank McCoy, Reed Richards, and Tony Stark all roomed together at university. I know this deviates from canon. I'm not even sure that they're all the right ages to have gone to school together. But hey, this is fanfiction. I can do that.

Reed says, “Pretty sure it’s Tony’s turn.”

Well, no. _Says_ , that’s the wrong verb, because _says_ implies that a normal person could understand him in that moment. No, no, Reed Richards is drunk off his ever-loving ass on beer with a tequila chaser. He’s past the point where he _says_ anything—in English, at least.

Instead, Reed slurs, “Pre’ shure iths Tony sturn,” and then giggles at absolutely nothing.

Tony flops back against the side of Hank’s bottom bunk, rolling his eyes. “That’s enough for you, lightweight,” he declares, mostly because it changes the subject. He hates this stupid game. He hates it more than he hates his stupid Philosophy 100 gen-ed at the asscrack of dawn, but ever since the Truth or Dare Incident (and hey, for the record, he returned the beagle the very next day) and the Pictionary Debacle (it’d all been fun and games until Reed woke up the next morning with a drawing of, ahem, questionable taste on his cheek . . . and neck . . . and down one arm), it’s the only drinking game Hank McCoy will play.

Hank McCoy, who, by the way, can hold his liquor. 

And who holds the tequila bottle three inches from his lips before he says, “Mmm, I think the lady doth protest too much.”

“What? You remember what happened last time. I thought Sue’d take his head off with that plastic cafeteria knife, and all because there were a couple pictures of him and that Delta Kap’s pant—”

“They were soft,” Reed offers, and nuzzles the side of Hank’s thigh. Hank shoves him off. It’s kind of like when a puppy humps your leg, Tony thinks, because Reed just wants to cuddle when he’s drunk. Fun for Sue, less fun for his roommates.

“See?” Tony demands. “Straight from the horse’s mouth. Drunk horse’s mou— Can you get a horse drunk? I mean, you’re the farm boy, you would know.”

“Tony.” Hank looks over the top of his glasses. God, he’s _such_ a schoolmarm. Give him one of those holiday-specific sweaters, he’s good to go. “Is it or is it not your turn?”

Tony sighs. When he picks up his beer can, it’s empty, and so is the cardboard box they all came in. Dammit. “Technically, I think it’s Reed’s turn.”

Reed burps.

“Unfortunately, our dear friend is—momentarily indisposed.” To Hank’s credit, that’s kinda true, since Reed’s now cuddled up with and petting his own fuzzy slipper. “I believe that makes you our next subject.”

“I hate this game.”

“Is that a non-denial I hear?”

Come to think of it, he hates _Hank_. “Just go,” he grumbles, and crosses his arms.

But Hank never just _goes_ , not with anything. Hank’s the person who reviews his reading for a half-hour before class just to make sure he didn’t miss some nuance he can use to dazzle the plebeians around him. Hank once changed his t-shirt three different times before going to the gym. Tony’s pretty sure that next to _slower than molasses_ in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Hank that he spent three hours prepping for.

Well, you know, if _slower than molasses_ was in the dictionary, and whatever.

Hank drums his fingers against the tequila bottle. “Your options are . . . Hmmm. This is a difficult choice.” When Tony leans forward, stretching for the bottle, Hank smacks his hand away. He helps himself to a healthy gulp, then two, and at the rate he’s going, Tony’s only hope of getting Reed-level drunk is to go down to the technical college and borrow some antifreeze. He’s just about to share this with the class, too, when Hank says, “Superman, Batman, and Captain America.”

The words never make it to Tony’s lips.

On the floor, Reed laughs. He laughs because he’s drunk, not because it’s funny. It’s not funny, not to Reed. Reed grew up on Asimov and Tolkien, not comic books. No, the only person it’s funny to is Hank, who’s sitting there with this smug little smile on his face. His eyes dance behind his glasses, a little alcohol-glazed but mostly evil.

Actually, that’s a good way to describe Hank McCoy: mostly evil. Someday, when he owns a NASDAQ-traded company or a small island nation, Tony’ll put Hank on his Most Wanted list with that exact caption. He looks forward to it.

In the meantime, he leans for the bottle again. “I pass.”

“Oh, no-no-no, my friend,” Hank chides. He’s faster than you’d think, just looking at him and all that _width_ of his, and the bottle’s out of reach within a half second. Hank dangles it behind him, and even though Tony knows he could wrestle it out of his grip, he doesn’t bother trying. He sinks back against the side of the bunk instead and tries to burn a hole in Hank’s forehead through sheer force of will.

Doesn’t work, but hey, worth a shot.

“I can pass if I want,” he retorts.

Hank _tsks_ like a schoolmarm, too. “As you so kindly reminded me when I last attempted to demure a round—”

“Because, let’s face it, you just didn’t want to admit you want to marry that Greg guy in 10C and give him fat genius babies.”

“—once the challenge has been presented, it must be answered.” For somebody who pretends to be nice, his grin is demonic. Tony immediately hates that grin. “In detail.”

“So, wait,” Tony says, and holds up a hand. “Let me just—make sure I’ve got this straight. I need to specify who I want to fuck, marry, and kill—”

“As per the rules you made up, yes,” Hank agrees.

“—out of Batman, Superman, and Captain Ahab.”

“America!” Reed announces, but he sounds like he’s from Alabama. _Amurikuh!_

Tony hates him, too.

But not as much as he hates the slow-burn smile that spreads across Hank’s face, starting at the corners of his lips and finally finding the places that will be laugh-lines in another fifteen years. Yeah, that smile will be punishable by death the instant Tony buys his island nation.

He holds out his hand. “I at least get a drink,” he insists.

“Mmm, I suppose,” Hank replies, and turns over the bottle.

No alcohol in the world tastes as sweet as the five healthy gulps Tony takes in that moment. It burns his throat and belly—they didn’t spring for the expensive stuff, not when Saint Patrick’s Day liquor sales are right around the corner—but he actually likes that about it. He likes the distracting twist in his gut and the way it makes him feel almost instantly drunker.

Even if he knows it’s all wishful thinking.

“Kill’s easy,” he decides, glancing up from the bottle to look at Hank. He’s watching with way too much attention for the friend issuing a stupid challenge, and Tony knows why. He knows just like he knows the reason Hank shows off so much in the one biology class that Greg in 10C is in, because he knows _Hank_. He knows the way that brain works, how his curiosity and his _want_ and his interest all manifest. And if Hank ever makes up for tonight, he might be allowed to be the vice president of Starkopolis.

Maybe.

“Is it?” Hank asks, because Tony’s taking another swig out of the bottle.

“Sure. Batman.”

“Because?”

“Because the guy just needs therapy. He needs an hour a week to sit down and cry about Mom and Dad getting gunned down in the street, and he’ll be good as new.” He shrugs. “Meanwhile, I don’t want the screwed-up emotional liability on my conscience. I mean, can you imagine what happens if I screw him without calling?”

“ _I’m Batman_ ,” Reed slurs.

Tony snaps and points a finger at him. “Exactly! That. That, in the middle of the night, before there’s a—bat knife or a bat garrote taking care of business. And the only thing worse than that’s when I marry him and he wants me to hold him all night while he cries.”

And oh, it takes so much composure from Hank not to just burst out laughing. Tony can see it in his face, and he grips the bottle a little tighter. If he can get Hank laughing, he can get him distracted. They can talk about University of Illinois football or the corn crop or something that isn’t, you know, this.

But when he pauses to take another swig, Hank says, “That’s one.”

Dammit.

“So, then, fuck?” Tony asks after a swallow so big, he almost chokes himself.

Hank shrugs. “If you’d prefer.”

He nods and wets his lips. “Fuck, well, I mean. Man of steel? You can’t really go wrong there. I mean, aside from the _faster than a speeding bullet_ part. That might be a problem, depending on what you’re into . . . ”

Reed laughs. It’s instant, it’s loud, and for a moment Tony grins in triumph. If Reed’s laughing, that means Hank’ll be laughing, and—

“Two,” Hank deadpans, and holds up two fingers.

Oh, for the love of—

There’s not enough tequila left for an alcoholic blackout. Tony considers it, the inch and a half still in the bottle, but really, that’s hardly enough for a good strong buzz at this point in the evening. Reed stops laughing to make sad little sounds. He presses his nose against his slipper, and as pathetic as it is, Tony can’t help but feel like the depressing one.

Hank’s still watching him.

Hank watches him until he lulls his head back against the mattress and stares at the pictures of the McCoy farm that Hank keeps shoved between the slats of the top bunk, his reminders of home. 

“I hate you,” he says.

“I,” Hank replies, “am not the one who volunteered the story.”

“I was _seven_ ,” Tony retorts, and snaps his head straight so he can look at Hank. At least, he tries to. The alcohol’s setting in, and the room swims before he can focus. “I was seven, I didn’t know any better, and if your best friend had a Captain America uniform and his sister had a bride costume, you know what? You’d do it, too.”

Hank laughs then, warm and low, and Tony tries his best to finish off what’s left in the bottle. After three big gulps, though, it tastes like the bottom of someone’s shoe (or at least, what Tony assumes the bottom of someone’s shoe tastes like—he’s never tried to know), and he sets it down.

Across the room, Hank wiggles two fingers. “You still didn’t say it,” he points out.

He sighs. “Fine,” he sneers, forcing as much heat as he can into that one word. “I’d marry Captain America.”

And goddamn if Hank isn’t a smug, smug bastard for the next three weeks, just from that.

 

Years later—decades, really, if you’re being technical, but Tony’s not sure he wants to be technical with his age until the day that Just for Men stops working on his hard-coverage gray—Tony gets married. He doesn’t want to call it getting married, because it’s not a wedding as much as it is a massive party with a side of “I do.” But since there’s a signed marriage certificate and a Norse demi-god presiding, and because he’s marrying someone who really wants the actual label of “wedding,” well.

Tony’s the goddamn Iron Man. He knows how to identify a battle he can’t win.

Midway through the party (reception, in wedding-language), when he’s regaling Pepper and the approximately three other Stark Industries employees he actually likes with a slightly bawdy joke involving a priest, a rabbi, and a monkey, Steve comes up behind him with a folded-up slip of paper. “Your, uh, smiley friend asked me to give you this,” he says.

He points back over both their shoulders, and Tony twists to see Hank McCoy standing by the bar.

Smiling.

Tony knows that smile.

“It’s a little creepy, the way he keeps—watching like that,” Steve continues, but Tony’s unfolding the paper instead of listening. Which, you know, technically rude, but sometimes there are bigger fish to fry and—

_You didn’t have to take the game so seriously, Tony._

The sound Tony lets out— Well, let’s just say that he’s made more flattering sounds. While drunk, high, simultaneously drunk _and_ high, or dying.

“Tony?” Steve asks, putting a hand on the small of his back.

“Never mind,” Tony replies, and crumples up the paper.

In case you missed the memo, Hank McCoy is a bastard.

Not that Tony’s husband needs to know that.


End file.
